Black History Month
draws global traveler to metro area

As a young lad, Ian Hall
was challenged to learn how to play the piano over
the summer holidays. "Ian Hall, still a
playboy, eh," his teacher at Archbishop
Tenison's Grammar School scolded the 14-year-old.
"No serious effort."

By the time school started back up,
the self-taught black teenager from the colony of
British Guyana (now Guyana) astonished his teachers
at the elite London school.

"I was playing the preludes
and fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach," said Hall,
63. "I was at the piano day and night."

To say that classical music changed
the course of Hall's life would be an understatement.
It became a vital thread that bound all his passions
together.

Ian Hall sits at the organ at Episcopal Cathedral of
St. Philip, where he performed in November. His love
of music is the thread running through his work for
peace and racial harmony.

It even helped him earn a
job as an unofficial global ambassador of sorts. U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan tapped Hall three years ago to
head a new network of charitable organizations -- World
Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, or WANGO --
that was part of an effort to clean up the waning reputation
of the world body.

"WANGO has been an important
image-corrective for the U.N.," said Hall, in Atlanta
for Black History Month events. "We concentrate on the
Third World. We are calling for a culture of peace and
nonviolence."

The son of a Royal Air Force flier, Hall
abandoned family hopes of his becoming a doctor, instead
focusing on mastering the organ. He is believed to be the
first black graduate of Oxford University's prestigious music
school. He went on to compose masterpieces and played in the
world's finest halls.

But he was always keenly aware of the color
of his skin and of the monochromatic nature of his
upper-crust schools and performance hall audiences. Inspired
by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights
movement, Hall set about to splash a bit of color in the
largely white world about him.

A new 'racial harmony'

Shaken by King's slaying in 1968, Hall
conceived the Bloomsbury International Society, an
institution that helped Hall marry his musical talent with
his desire to keep the civil rights leader's dreams alive.

"My real thing in life has been
promoting racial harmony through the arts," Hall said in
his perfect queen's English. "Most people respond warmly
toward one another in an atmosphere where beautiful music
prevails."

Hall began orchestrating multicultural
performances that twinned classical Western instruments with
sounds from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.

Sitar met violin. Westminster Abbey
resounded with the twang of the Ebony Steel Band. And the
Commonwealth Institute marked its golden jubilee with Queen
Elizabeth II in the audience and the thumping of Ashanti
drums accompanying baroque brass on stage.

"Most events in well-known venues used
to be sedate," Hall said. "Lugubrious,
really."

At his nephew's suburban home in
Fayetteville, Hall relaxed in burgundy sweats with a cup of
coffee warming his hands. The kitchen table was a far cry
from St. Martin-in-the-Fields or the Achimota School in
Ghana, where Hall spent years as music director.

Yet Hall seemed just as comfortable here.
In between his thoughts on Atlanta's appeal as an
international city, Shakespeare rolled off his tongue with
the greatest of ease. "Music is the food of love,"
he said.

Three decades of intercultural music gained
fame for Hall -- his part nobleman, part colonized persona
appealing to a broad spectrum of people.

A quick journey through the pages of his
photo albums turned up familiar faces: Nelson Mandela, Tony
Blair, Queen Noor of Jordan, Desmond Tutu, former U.N. human
rights commissioner Mary Robinson. Hall "hangs"
with the Rev. Al Sharpton just as easily as he does with
former British Prime Minister John Major.

In 2000, Annan called on Hall for a job
that seemed a perfect fit in Hall's musical mosaic of
goodwill and harmony. Annan's massive reforms at the United
Nations included the formation of an independent group of
nongovernmental charitable organizations around the globe.

"It was Annan's idea," Hall said
of the organization that came to be known as WANGO. "He
wanted dramatic reformation, but not through governments. It
was a short jump for me from Bloomsbury to NGOs
[nongovernmental organizations]. The only difference is that
Bloomsbury is more artistic."

Waking the young

Sixteen international agencies came
together to form WANGO, a network that pledged to promote the
ideals of the United Nations and the ideals of peace, justice
and well-being for all of humanity.

WANGO, now with 450 varied members, meets
every October to share ideas.

"Most governments are vagabonds. They
are corrupt," Hall said. "NGOs should play a bigger
role. Their aim is not self-aggrandizement; their aim is to
serve the people."

To generate support and build his
organization's membership, Hall spends a good bit of time
traveling and recruiting eager hands ready to help the
disadvantaged. He also promotes an international Slavery
Memorial Day and Human Rights Day, both in December.

He decided to spend Black History Month in
Atlanta, the home of the civil rights movement.

"I want to take King's legacy forward
in the most practical and idealistic way," Hall said,
recounting an incident not long ago when two black teenagers
in London stopped the conversation cold to ask, "Was
King black or white?"

"King's gone to sleep a bit. Of
course, he's big news here in Atlanta, but in the rest of the
world, he's not," Hall said. "We have to figure out
a way to repackage him for the younger generations."

King's ideals, said Hall, fit in perfectly
with every single one of his life missions, including WANGO.
While in Atlanta, Hall said, he was anxious to meet with
Coretta Scott King, philanthropist Ted Turner, Jimmy and
Rosalynn Carter and Peter Bell, the president of the relief
agency CARE USA.

When he was here last November, he played
at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip in Buckhead. He
wants to take primarily black Morehouse students to mostly
white St. Martin's Episcopal School.

"I want to bring all these people
together," he said. "I'd like to see a world where
we can approach each other with the utmost charm. The Garden
of Eden -- I've seen glimpses of this."

An idealist, perhaps, at heart? "Of
course, I am," exclaimed Hall, a broad smile filling his
face. "To express the ideal is, after all, the height of
nobility."